The Middle Place

by Kealan Ryan

  Maybe if his mam hadn’t died, he thinks. But not really, he was just unlucky where his punch landed on me. He’s been in loads of fights and nothing like that had ever happened. He was a bully in school because of his size, has pushed people around all his life – even in primary school, before his mam died. He looks around the cell. These are the kind of guys that are supposed to be here. His life was supposed to be teed up differently. It should not have come to this. Okay, maybe not Seamus either, but the other three, Christ.

  How the fuck did Seamus wind up here, anyway? He’s dying to know. He’ll ask tomorrow at some point. Even though it’s only his first night he can already tell that he’s higher up on the pecking order than this guy. Poor bastard. Danny watches him sleep, round belly, mouth wide open – the more he thinks about it, Seamus doesn’t look smart enough to be some swindling businessman; he looks more like a regular fuck-up. Danny lets out a little chuckle – just the faintest of ones. The thought of this poor eejit in prison. He’s glad he’s in the cell with him, at least there is someone worse off. At least Danny has his height and bulk, and he prays that the others will assume that he is a genuine tough guy. But then he thinks you can always spot the real deal against a fake – ‘Shit, what am I going to do when that happens?’

  Danny starts thinking of tomorrow – his first day among the wolves. How will he spend it? Should he try to talk to someone or keep to himself? What will he do if someone confronts him? Act tough or run away – although where the hell can he run to, anyway? He squirms about, uncomfortable on the skinny floor-level mattress, but that’s not why he has trouble sleeping. Rolling back and forth, all the worries of tomorrow fill his brain. I’ll stay with him all night, waiting for him to sleep so that I can wake him right back up again.

  32

  John finishes his cold tea, chats a bit longer with Brian and Tim – mainly about the hearing and how much they all hated the barrister. How the hell can they do that job? Worse than the criminals – that kind of thing. He’s anxious enough to leave and really needs to see Niamh, so stands and hugs the lads goodbye.

  Outside, he sits into his car and lets the engine run for a minute to unfog the windows. I sit with him. I actually taught John how to drive – well, I kind of did; I was the first person to take him driving. We drove around a train station car park and I remember thinking he was pretty good for a first timer, despite nearly loafing his head off the steering wheel once or twice from lashing on the brake.

  As the windows defog, John shuffles through his Spotify. I can’t believe what tune he puts on – Antony and the Johnsons’ ‘Hope There’s Someone’. Christ, it’s a beautiful song; I wish they’d thought to play it at my funeral. He puts it on because he wants to feel sad, wants to think of me. The way your man sings somehow makes John feel like it is personal to him. Music has a great way of doing that sometimes. When he sings about being scared of a middle place between light and nowhere I feel like he’s singing about me too.

  John switches on his headlights as he turns onto the road and the two of us listen, with John singing along at the top of his voice; I’d join in with him if I could. Instead I just feel grateful that I knew him and had him as a best friend. I feel truly lucky.

  It’s gone ten o’clock when John texts Niamh while driving to let her know that he is on his way home. He’s dying to see her; it’s been such a long day. He drives to a roundabout where he should turn left in the direction of his home, but at the last second swings right. For some reason Pam has jumped into his head. He doesn’t know why he has to see her, he just does.

  When he arrives at my old house he walks up as far as the front door before he has second thoughts about going in, realising it’s a bit late. He doesn’t want to frighten her or wake Robbie, so texts her instead of ringing the doorbell.

  Hey Pam I’m outside can I come in?

  He’s not long waiting when Pam answers the door in her dressing gown. ‘John – you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says as he steps in the hall, ‘I just had to see how you are.’

  ‘Thanks, John, I’m glad you’re here.’

  The two of them sit in the living room and Pamela puts on the gas fire.

  ‘Thanks for calling over.’

  ‘Pam, you look so tired.’

  ‘So do you, John-Boy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m jet-lagged.’ He almost says, ‘What’s your excuse?’, but holds off. He knows full well what her excuse is.

  The two of them share a smile. Then Pam sighs. ‘I can’t sleep, John; it’s terrible. I just can’t sleep without him. And when I do Robbie wakes me up. And I feel like screaming my head off at him.’

  John frowns. ‘Is there anything I can do? Take Robbie for a little while or something, give you a break?’

  ‘No, it’s a lovely offer, though.’

  ‘Seriously, even just for a week?’

  ‘Thanks, John, but as much as the little monster drives me crazy he’s the only thing keeping me sane.’

  John chuckles. ‘That’s good, I like that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well that, it’s an oxymoron or something isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it’s just a play on words. Are oxymorons not things like terrible beauty?’

  ‘Exactly – that’s the same idea as crazy keeping you sane, that’s an oxymoron.’

  ‘You’re an oxymoron,’ Pam says.

  The two of them chuckle.

  ‘Piss off.’

  Pam’s face has lit up – she looks less tired, somehow. She always loves taking the piss out of John and he knows she does. Maybe that’s why he called over. Not to talk about the sentencing or to get her feelings on it – he already knew the answer to that. Just to be there for her, say something stupid and tease each other.

  It’s after one o’clock when he finally leaves. He feels bad that Niamh is in the house by herself but knows she’ll understand. When he finally crawls into bed with his new wife, he warms his feet against her the way Pam used to do with me. Niamh is practically asleep but just whispers to him that she loves him. ‘I love you too, baby.’ He kisses her on the ear and falls asleep almost straight away.

  33

  Danny’s not fully sleeping; he’s just trying to convince himself that he is. Getting up time is looming and he knows it. If he could just get a little sleep before the approaching alarm call at 8.20 a.m., he thinks. His eyelids are heavy, he’s just about there. Time for me to swoop into action.

  Wake the fuck up!

  A little bit of eye movement. All the while he’s telling himself that he’s just about to drift off. A quiet little whisper in his ear. He can’t hear me, but he can feel it. I know he can.

  Open your eyes, Danny; you’re awake.

  His eyes reluctantly oblige me.

  I love seeing the disappointment on his face. The failure he feels for not being able to conquer whatever the hell is keeping him up is so evident in his expression. He closes his eyes again quickly but another little whisper – You’re awake, Danny; open those eyes, you are awake – forces them open again. He looks around the room and through the glass wall. He can just about make out the time on a clock hanging on the wall down the corridor near one of the guard stations. Shit – it’s 7.10 a.m. He turns over onto his side but no amount of shuffling about is going to change anything. Now all he can think about is the clock and how even if he does manage to sleep, in just over an hour he’ll have to get up.

  ‘Fuck it anyway,’ he mutters, as he sits up. He looks around the room and sees that Seamus is awake as well and gawking at him from his bunk. Danny shudders at the sight. ‘Nobody sleeps the first night,’ Seamus says creepily.

  ‘No, it’s not that. I never sleep well – not for ages.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Plus – it’s fucking uncomfortable in here,’ Danny says, gesturing to the skinny-ass mattres
s that he’s been stuck with.

  ‘You won’t sleep the second night either,’ Seamus adds. ‘I haven’t properly slept since I got here.’

  Danny’s curiosity gets the better of him. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Four days ago.’

  ‘Why was that?’ He figures just come out with it – fuck it.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Seamus asks defensively.

  ‘Manslaughter.’

  Straight out with it again; no more bullshit.

  Seamus lifts himself up on his left elbow. ‘Oh? Car or something?’

  ‘Bar fight.’

  Wasn’t much of a fight. God, I’m still so embarrassed by that.

  ‘So how about you?’ Danny persists.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Tell ’im, Seamie.’

  Wacko is up on the top bunk above Seamus and looks down at the pair of them with a big smile on his face. It’s an infectious smile, so Danny joins him with one.

  ‘What?’ Danny probes.

  Wacko’s smile lengthens. ‘Poor auld Seamie was caught with a hooker.’

  ‘You go to prison over that?’ Danny asks.

  ‘You do when she’s only fourteen,’ Wacko sneers.

  ‘I didn’t know she was fourteen!’ Seamus cries in his defence.

  ‘You knew she wasn’t fuckin’ eighteen!’

  ‘I thought she was sixteen or maybe older.’

  ‘Oh, that’s alright so – tell him how they caught you, Shambo.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Seamus whimpers.

  ‘Fuckin’ eejit started writin’ the bitch love letters!’

  ‘Ah Christ,’ Danny says with a look of disbelief.

  ‘This clown was bangin’ a kid, then sendin’ love letters to her bleedin’ ma.’

  Seamus looks flustered. ‘Not to her mam – to the address I had. I didn’t know she lived at home.’

  Wacko laughs so hard he looks ready to fall off the bunk bed. ‘I didn’t know she lived at home,’ he mimics in the same desperate tone. ‘Where else is she gonna bleedin’ live? Fuckin’ Thailand? Why didn’t you text your mate Gary Glitter and find out where she lived?’ Danny laughs at that one. ‘I’m going to call you Seamie Sparkles from now on,’ Wacko declares. Danny cracks up and Wacko is into it. ‘Yeah, wha’ you reckon Dan – Gary Glitter and Seamie Sparkles together at last! You’d have mothers lockin’ up their prams for miles around. Streets will be bare – you’d hear a fuckin’ pin drop when these two boys roll into town.’

  ‘At least I’m not a junkie,’ Seamus mutters.

  Wacko’s expression hardens. ‘Watch it, kiddy fucker – at least drugs are fun. Then again I suppose you find ridin’ kids fun. Pervert – that’s your drug, bald twats.’

  ‘I didn’t know she was fourteen,’ Seamie’s voice is breaking a little bit and Wacko draws back.

  ‘Ah, I’m only buzzin’ with you Shambles – you know tha’.’ Wacko hops down from his bunk and leaps in beside Seamus. ‘Come here to me,’ he calls out, grabbing Seamus playfully around the neck and wrestling him to his chest.

  ‘Get off me,’ Seamus cries.

  Wacko looks delighted and Danny, in a strange way, wonders if he might actually like Wacko.

  There’s a sudden rustling from the other top bunk. ‘Shut fuck up all you.’

  ‘Ah good mornin’ Bogman – and how’d ya sleep?’ Wacko asks.

  ‘Shut fuck up or I beat you.’

  ‘Fine, thank you, although I have a sligh’ crick in me neck.’

  ‘Wacko! Shut fuck up.’ Bogdasha sits up and gives Wacko and Danny a look that puts the shits up both of them and stops all conversation.

  Lying back on his mattress, Danny thinks again about how he can’t wait to get the hell out of this cell and into his own. Just a few days. This Bogdasha guy really scares the crap out of him; the other three seem harmless enough, although he still reckons that he can’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them.

  He just wants to be alone. The whole experience has been so horrible since the conviction. Straight from the courthouse to the prison. Well, not straight. First he had to sit in this heap of shit of a wagon for over two hours. I don’t know what they’re called, but it’s basically a wagon with a bunch of box cells in them for transporting inmates to prison. Slightly inhumane if you ask me but fuck it. He had to sit there for two hours and wait for whatever else was scheduled in the court to finish up. At least the drive to the prison itself wasn’t too long, but the wait before leaving felt like he’d been in the wagon for days, stuck sitting on that really uncomfortable plastic seat. He’d never felt so alone in his life and, knowing Danny’s history, I’d been surprised that he wasn’t falling around the place, bawling his eyes out. He hadn’t even done his trademark eyes filling up thing – he just sat there looking at the wall of his box cell, which was about a foot from his nose. There were marks there that past inmates had scratched in. One big mark looked like it was done with a lighter – and Danny couldn’t help but wonder how the hell it had been done, as you’re cuffed behind your back the entire time you’re in there.

  Once they finally got moving, his next stop was to an office outside the prison where all his personal belongings were taken. They finally took his cuffs off and he felt ever so slightly less like a common criminal. He was then brought into the main prison where he first got his whiff of wet cardboard – all his details were taken: Height – 6 foot 4 inches. Weight – 210 pounds. Tattoos – none. Birthmarks – none.

  ‘Sign here.’

  He took the pen and noticed that his hands were shaking. He scribbled his name with weak fingers. It didn’t look like his signature; it looked as if someone else had written it. He felt as if he was someone else. But then, he was, and he would never be the same man again.

  One

  Year

  Dead

  34

  Danny looks up at all the pictures of Michelle and debates whether or not to take them down. She dumped him a month ago, but he keeps thinking maybe she’ll come to her senses. What poor dozy Danny doesn’t realise is that dumping him was Michelle coming to her senses and even thinking about getting back with him is the furthest thing from her mind. While he’s agonising over the photographs, she’s watching Scrubs repeats, for Christ’s sake. You have to laugh at the poor bastard – while he’s tormenting himself over her and imagining that somewhere across the city she is looking at his picture and crying too, she’s laughing at the curly headed dude who was in Platoon.

  She stuck with him for the first four months he was inside, but it just got to be too much. For a start it was a bit of a pain in the arse having to visit him, and it was humiliating too. She disliked being associated with the kind of people she’d run into down there. Grandmothers telling her how they sneak drugs in to their grandsons by kissing them during family visits – giving her the best tricks for it. Michelle found it and them disgusting. She felt dirtier and dirtier after every visit.

  Not to mention that Danny wrecked her head during each visit. He’d try to make an effort to be upbeat when he’d see her, but she just found him depressing and boring. They’d end up small-talking. It wasn’t his fault, to be fair – what the hell are you going to talk about in them shitty little booths? Someone sitting on either side of you, not at all private. Plus the fact that there was nothing to talk about, anyway. Danny didn’t want to talk about life inside, but he didn’t particularly want to hear about life outside and all he was missing either.

  Crappy state to find yourself in. Plus, she was sick of taking his clothes and washing them. There is no big launderette in Mountjoy. You start off with prison-issue clothes and then, after a couple of weeks, if you want to wear your own clothes you get someone from the outside to bring them in and take them out once a week to be washed. Michelle found all that degrading.

  If she was being h
onest with herself, she’d found the entire situation far harder than she’d imagined right from the start and had really wanted to end it after the first month. But she’d been afraid people would think she was a bitch for leaving him there to rot. After four months of it, though, she’d finally had enough: ‘Fuck this,’ she said, ‘fuck this.’

  Still, a month after the break-up, Danny continues to look at the photographs. Her beautiful face, her big lips, her white teeth, sallow skin for a girl with blonde hair – although her hair is dyed so that isn’t anything too amazing. She is beautiful, though, he thinks. He loves looking at her, even though it causes him pain now. He has gone through the same ritual the last few nights, telling himself that if she doesn’t visit that day he’ll finally do it – get rid of the photographs once and for all. It’s not easy, though. In fact, it feels like the hardest thing in the world. These photos got him through a lot of rough nights at the start of his time in the ’Joy.

  He remembers first moving into the cell five months ago. Initially, he’d been half-pleased just to be out of that horrible five-man cell. After sitting alone for five minutes, though, he got an overwhelming feeling of disappointment when he realised how boring his life was going to be for the next eighteen months – how the hell was he going to do it?

  The cell is basic: a springy bed, bare blue walls, a TV, a tiny window you can’t look out of, a bit of a desk and a jacks in the corner. Nightmare. He wasn’t sitting there long that first day when he was called to the office of the governor.

  ‘Danny Murray, my name is Governor Sean Logan.’

  ‘Hello,’ Danny said as he sat down in front of the governor’s desk. He hadn’t a clue what to expect, so his nerves started kicking in.

  Logan leaned back in his chair, which was grazing the back wall of his pokey office. ‘I don’t meet with every inmate on their arrival but you are slightly different from the norm here.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, you’ve no previous convictions, you don’t know anyone here, you’re not a drug user. You’re not from their world, Mr Murray. Unfortunately, Danny, you are going to stick out like a sore thumb.’